Sunday, February 5, 2017

Troubling Revelation from the Yemen Raid

It's been over a week now since the Yemen raid that was, while successful in its objective, so troubled that is being largely labeled as a botched raid. In my first post on the subject I fell just short of condemning the operation because it does not seem to be in line with Trump's stated foreign policy or even the policy that has been in place. At this point we're still in the honeymoon phase with Trump and I'm willing to throw him some benefit-of-the-doubt while he establishes patterns of behavior. However in the past week the most troubling aspect of the whole incident has come to light: the media has largely left it alone.

That's not to say he hasn't be criticized and ridiculed for it. He certainly has. But nothing of the co-ordinated media blitzes we're used to seeing used against him. This operation opened a huge to flank to attack Trump on both foreign policy and military judgment. It could easily be spun to fit the media's depiction of him as brash and careless. But it was hardly even the biggest story of the week. Much more effort was spent on the narrative that Trump's teams is "in chaos." An even bigger story was the nonsense of Trump having belligerent phone with multiple foreign heads of state. The most viral thing I've seen out of the left this week is their ridicule of Kellyanne Conway for stating that it was a massacre in Bowling Green that led the Obama administration to impose travel restriction to some countries, rather than an averted massacre. It was primarily an exercise in pedantry, certainly no where near the magnitude of the Yemen raid in importance.

Why is the media laying off Trump when they have an actual legitimate reason to blast him? Clearly they must support his actions there. Or more like, the people driving the propaganda agenda support it. It is very troubling that the first action of the candidate with the anti-establishment foreign policy seems to be an establishment-approved operation. Is he being turned so soon? Or is this the learning curve at play? Certainly the same institutional forces that almost completely bent Obama to their will have been heavily lobbying Trump. If that is the case, then the silver lining of the botched raid may be to drive Trump to reject this kind of advice in the future, in the way that John F. Kennedy was said to have lost faith in CIA counsel after the botched Bay of Pigs operation.